I know logically that people can do whatever they want and it doesn’t affect me in any way so I shouldn’t care, but I do still get a visceral eye-twitching feeling whenever someone talks about installing Windows on a Steam Deck. It’s like someone buying a sports car and using it to tow a caravan or something.
The only times it’s OK are when it’s planned for specific softwares. For example, I can’t run Rocksmith 2014 on native Deck but it works fine in Windows. Similarly, software that’s OS limited would be another use.
But if your main thing is gaming, and you aren’t dual booting… Yeah, I’m judging you. (And I mainly use Windows on PC. But why, why, why would you need to only run Windows on a Steam Deck without a specific purpose
Dude, same. I cannot understand it (for games. I’m sure people have valid reasons if they’re using the Deck for some other purpose). It seems there is a cohort of otherwise relatively tech savvy people who are just terrified of all things “Linux.”
Maybe they heard horror stories from friends or family while growing up and aren’t aware of just how close to complete compatibility Proton is. In fact, in some cases, it can somehow run games better than if one were to dual boot and install in Windows.
Even Valve’s own Steam Deck verification should be taken with a grain of salt, it seems as though they’re being extra conservative with those. I’ve gotten several "unsupported " games working (very easily), for example , Dark Souls: Prepare to Die edition is listed on Steam as “unsupported,” but it works great (with DSFix even) on my Deck.
ProtonDB is a far better resource for anyone reading this who hadn’t heard of it.
But yeah, it’s almost like this subconscious aversion to Linux. And they want to be in their comfort zone I guess.
I mean there’s a time and a place.
What if someone has gamepass or a ton of free games on EGS?
Unsure about EGS, but Gamepass can only stream via xcloud on non-microsoft platforms
The GP app/store for installing games locally is only available on Windows
People fear what they don’t know. Valve has made Linux gaming stupid easy and still people are more worried about FOMO of that small percentage of games that don’t run on Linux. Maybe we’ll see a shift if someone releases a banger game that’s designed to be really really good on steam deck (so Linux exclusive, basically) and have it out in Linux for a few months before the windows version comes out
Valve has made Linux gaming stupid easy and still people are more worried about FOMO of that small percentage of games that don’t run on Linux.
Unfortunately, most of the non-working games are also the ones people tend to have FOMO about. I feel like they’re mostly online games with anti-cheats which, by their online nature, means that you will feel really missing out when all of your friends except you play the game, more so than single player games.
